Although no one could be surprised that the President and his Cabinet hesitated to put themselves without reserve in the hands of an adventurer, Eaton’s anger was extreme at finding the Government earnest for peace rather than war. Himself a Connecticut Federalist, a close friend of Timothy Pickering, he expressed his feelings in his private letters with the bitterness as well as with the humor of his class.[314]
“I waited on the President and the Attorney-General. One of them was civil, and the other grave.... I endeavored to enforce conviction on the mind of Mr. Lincoln of the necessity of meeting the aggressions of Barbary by retaliation. He waived the subject, and amused me with predictions of a political millennium which was about to happen in the United States. The millennium was to usher in upon us as the irresistible consequence of the goodness of heart, integrity of mind, and correctness of disposition of Mr. Jefferson. All nations, even pirates and savages, were to be moved by the influence of his persuasive virtue and masterly skill in diplomacy.”
Eaton’s interviews probably took place at the moment when the Louisiana treaty confirmed the Cabinet in its peace policy and in reliance on diplomacy. In March, 1804, Eaton succeeded in returning to the Mediterranean as naval agent, but without special powers for the purpose he had in mind.
“The President becomes reserved; the Secretary of War ‘believes we had better pay tribute,’—he said this to me in his own office. Gallatin, like a cowardly Jew, shrinks behind the counter. Mr. Madison ‘leaves everything to the Secretary of the Navy Department.’ And I am ordered on the expedition by Secretary Smith,—who, by the by, is as much of a gentleman and a soldier as his relation with the Administration will suffer,—without any special instructions to regulate my conduct.”
With no other authority to act as a military officer than a vague recommendation from the President as a man who was likely to be extremely useful to Barron, Eaton returned with Barron’s large squadron. He felt himself ill-treated, for he was irritable and self-asserting by nature, and was haunted by a fixed idea too unreasonable for the President to adopt; but he chose to act without authority rather than not act at all, for he was born an adventurer, and difficulties which seemed to cooler heads insurmountable were nothing in his eyes. Sept. 5, 1804, he arrived at Malta, and thence sailed to Alexandria; for in the meanwhile Hamet had been driven to take refuge in Egypt, and Eaton on reaching Cairo, Dec. 8, 1804, found that the object of his search was shut up in Minyeh on the Nile with some rebellious Mamelukes, besieged by the viceroy’s troops. After infinite exertions and at no little personal danger, Eaton brought Hamet to Alexandria, where they collected some five hundred men, of whom one hundred were Christians recruited on the spot. Eaton made a convention with Hamet, arranged a plan of joint operations with Barron, and then at about the time when President Jefferson was delivering his second Inaugural Address, the navy agent led his little army into the desert with the courage of Alexander the Great, to conquer an African kingdom.
So motley a horde of Americans, Greeks, Tripolitans, and Arab camel-drivers had never before been seen on the soil of Egypt. Without discipline, cohesion, or sources of supply, even without water for days, their march of five hundred miles was a sort of miracle. Eaton’s indomitable obstinacy barely escaped ending in his massacre by the Arabs, or by their desertion in a mass with Hamet at their head; yet in about six weeks they succeeded, April 17, 1805, in reaching Bomba, where to Eaton’s consternation and despair he found no American ships.[315]
“Nothing could prevail on our Arabs to believe that any had been there. They abused us as impostors and infidels, and said we had drawn them into that situation with treacherous views. All began now to think of the means of individual safety; and the Arabs came to a resolution to separate from us the next morning. I recommended an attempt to get into Derne. This was thought impracticable. I went off with my Christians, and kept up fires upon a high mountain in our rear all night. At eight the next morning, at the instant when our camp was about breaking up, the Pacha’s casnadar, Zaid, who had ascended the mountain for a last look-out, discovered a sail! It was the ‘Argus;’ Captain Hull had seen our smokes, and stood in. Language is too poor to paint the joy and exultation which this messenger of life excited in every breast.”
Drawing supplies from the brig the little army rested a few days; and then, April 25, moved against Derne, where they found the town held by a garrison of eight hundred men who had thrown up earthworks and loopholed the terraces and houses for musketry. Eaton sent to the governor a flag of truce, which was sent back with the Eastern message,—“My head, or yours!” Three cruisers, the “Nautilus,” “Argus,” and “Hornet,” acted in concert with Eaton, and a vigorous combined attack, April 27, drove the governor and his garrison from the town. Eaton received a ball through the left wrist, but could not afford to be disabled, for on the news of his arrival a large force was sent from Tripoli to dislodge him; and he was obliged to fight another little battle, May 13, which would have been a massacre had not the ships’ guns held the Tripolitans in awe. Skirmishing continued another month without further results. Eaton had not the force to advance upon Tripoli, which was nearly seven hundred miles to the westward, and Hamet found no such popular support at Derne as he had hoped.
What influence Eaton’s success at Derne had on the Pacha at Tripoli was never perfectly understood; but the Pacha knew that Rodgers was making ready for an assault, beside which the hottest of Preble’s bombardments would seem gentle; Eaton at Derne with Hamet was an incessant and indefinite threat; his own subjects were suffering, and might at any moment break into violence; a change of ruler was so common a matter, as Yusuf had reason to remember, that in the alternative of losing his throne and head in one way or the other, he decided that peace was less hazardous than war. Immediately upon hearing that his troops had failed to retake Derne, he entered into negotiations with Tobias Lear, the American Consul-General at Algiers, who had come to Tripoli for the purpose; and on this occasion the Pacha negotiated with all the rapidity that could be wished. June 3, 1805, he submitted to the disgrace of making peace without being expressly paid for it, and Lear on his side consented to ransom the crew of the “Philadelphia” for sixty thousand dollars.
When Eaton learned what Lear had done, his anger was great and not unreasonable. That Lear should have made a treaty which sacrificed Eaton’s Mahometan allies, and paid sixty thousand dollars for the imprisoned seamen at a moment when Eaton held Derne, and could, as he thought, with two hundred marines on shore and an immense fleet at sea drive the Pacha out of his dominions within six weeks, was astonishing. Lear’s only excuse was the fear of causing a massacre of the “Philadelphia’s” crew,—a reason which Eaton thought unfounded and insufficient, and which was certainly, from a military point of view, inadmissible. The treaty left the Mahometan allies at Derne to be massacred, and threw Hamet on Eaton’s hands. Deposited at Syracuse with a suite of thirty persons without means of support, Caramelli became a suppliant for alms to the United States Congress. Eaton declared the treaty disgraceful, and thenceforth his grievances against the government took an acute form. The settlement of his accounts was slow and difficult. He returned to America and received great attentions, which made him none the less loud in complaint, until at last he died in 1811 a victim to drink and to craving for excitement. Eaton was beyond question a man of extraordinary energies and genius; he had even the rare courage to displease his own Federalist friends in 1807, because of defending Jefferson who had done nothing for him, but who at a critical moment represented in his eyes the Union.